The US space laboratory, Skylab I, plunged to Earth this eveningscattering debris across the southern Indian Ocean and sparselypopulated Western Australia.

All week there has been mounting speculation over where the spacecraftwould come down. It has been in orbit six years - for the past five ofthose it has been unoccupied.

Skylab's last signal was recorded at 1611 GMT. Less than an hour later atracking station at Ascension Island in the South Atlantic confirmed thesolar panels were beginning to peel off as the craft descended.The 77.5 ton Skylab could break into as many as 500 pieces. The 5,100 lb(2,310 kg) airlock shroud and 3,900 lb (1,767 kg) lead safe, whichprotects film from radiation, are expected to survive the heat ofre-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

Head of the NASA task force monitoring Skylab, Richard Smith, said theyhad already received reports of hot debris, which had lit up the nightsky, from several points in Western Australia.

Skylab was launched on 14 May 1973 and was lived in by three teams ofastronauts for periods of up to 84 days as they tested human enduranceover long periods of weightlessness.

While the astronauts were on board they were able to carry out manyvaluable scientific experiments including analysis of the sun's activityand how it affected the Earth.

Skylab was abandoned by the last crew in February 1974, since whenscientists have only had limited control over it. It was supposed tostay in orbit until the mid-1980s when the new shuttle would have cometo its rescue.

A Skylab task force of computer specialists, engineers, lawyers andpublic relations experts has been on standby at various NASA centres.It has been very difficult to predict exactly where and when the craftwould finally come down. Only two days ago, a NASA spokesman had beenpredicting it would land near the "edge of Cornwall".

In India, the police in all 22 states were put on full alert and thecivil aviation department was planning to ban flights across thesub-continent during the crucial hours of re-entry.

Skylab's final orbital path, its 34,981st, passed over the northPacific, the north west tip of the United States, south central Canada,north of Montreal and Ottawa and the state of Maine

You used to be able to buy pieces of Skylab from COLLECTspace.com, but I think they've all been sold now.

There is a whole economy in Kazakhstan for processing the fallen Soyuz stages that rain down on the steppe. The Russian military collect a few key components, and then the locals bring out their cutting torches and slice up the titanium and sell it.

Skylab was abandoned by the last crew in February 1974, since whenscientists have only had limited control over it. It was supposed tostay in orbit until the mid-1980s when the new shuttle would have cometo its rescue.

Sad! 70 TONS of space station, the last boon of the Saturn V, burning up.

It's too bad that Skylab did not stay up a couple more years. It would have been interesting to have seen a Shuttle docking with it. The shuttel program probably would have looked alot different with Skylab up there during the '80's (with periodic boosts from the shuttle of course).

It's too bad that Skylab did not stay up a couple more years. It would have been interesting to have seen a Shuttle docking with it.

Now that's interesting idea...would it be possible for Space Shuttle to dock to Skylab at all?Would Skylab be of any use to NASA after so many years spent without crew and there is a problem with only one docking port...first they should attach "Node-1" to it...However that is nice idea...

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The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.Jules H. Poincare

I had written in the other Skylab thread on this forum the question of whydidn't they use Skylab as a big solar observatory after 1974, seeing how well it did while the astronauts were on board. No sense having this bighunk of metal with a good astronomical telescope just drift around Earthover and over. But apparently NASA either did not want or did not thinkabout using Skylab for scientific purposes after the last human crew left.

Maybe they were hoping that a Space Shuttle mission would save it, butthey still could have done something scientificially useful with Skylab -after all, it was already in space and had a real working telescope readyto keep going. But I am probably just thinking logically and not bureaucratically.

As for rescuing an abandonded space station, the Soyuz T15 mission didthat with Salyut 7 in 1986 in an amazing mission that does not nearly getthe publicity it should to this day.

And NASA was plannnig a special robot ship that a Space Shuttle wouldhave attached to Skylab to boost it into a higher orbit. Perhaps they could have launched the rescue robot on an expendable rocket, butthere goes that logical thinking again.

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"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

I had written in the other Skylab thread on this forum the question of whydidn't they use Skylab as a big solar observatory after 1974, seeing how well it did while the astronauts were on board. No sense having this bighunk of metal with a good astronomical telescope just drift around Earthover and over. But apparently NASA either did not want or did not thinkabout using Skylab for scientific purposes after the last human crew left.

I know that Skylab ATM Solar Observatoryoperations were capable of remote control by the ground but were science data able to be downlinked remotely? Wasn't there a need for an onboard crew to change out film canisters for some or all of the solar instruments via EVA? And from the link I gave above, there were pointing stability and thermal control issues as well for effective operation.

I had written in the other Skylab thread on this forum the question of whydidn't they use Skylab as a big solar observatory after 1974, seeing how well it did while the astronauts were on board. No sense having this bighunk of metal with a good astronomical telescope just drift around Earthover and over. But apparently NASA either did not want or did not thinkabout using Skylab for scientific purposes after the last human crew left.

It used film didn't it? Some of the instruments certainly did - and without a crew there's no way to bring it back or replace it.

It used film didn't it? Some of the instruments certainly did - and without a crew there's no way to bring it back or replace it.

Doug

I know, I just find it unfortunate that NASA did not consider the ability totransmit the science data automatically, and Skylab certainly wasn't all that far from Earth.

It is also unfortunate that they didn't equip the space station with theability to boost itself higher, like the Salyuts of the same era could.

The Soviet stations even had the ability to be remotely de-orbited,which would have made Skylab's return a bit less dramatic if it couldhave done the same.

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"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

I know, I just find it unfortunate that NASA did not consider the ability totransmit the science data automatically...

So you weren't really asking why Skylab wasn't used for something it couldn't do, you were wondering why NASA didn't design a better space station to begin with?

I guess one can always think of a better design but, as the old saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I mean, after all, Orville and Wilbur could have worked a little harder and planned a little further ahead and built a P-51 Mustang, no?

So you weren't really asking why Skylab wasn't used for something it couldn't do, you were wondering why NASA didn't design a better space station to begin with?

I guess one can always think of a better design but, as the old saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I mean, after all, Orville and Wilbur could have worked a little harder and planned a little further ahead and built a P-51 Mustang, no?

Correct, and while I don't think the modifications I would have liked to seeon Skylab were all that radical (the Soviets did it in the 1970s, after all), ashas been said the budget and plans for Skylab weren't really meant to stretchas far into the future as one might have been originally led to believe, just as with Apollo.

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"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

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